1. Field of The Invention
The present invention relates to floor mats for use in passenger carrying vehicles, and more particularly to floor mats intended for use in automotive type vehicles. The improvements disclosed in the present application relate to a floor mat with integral retainer means which is much lighter than previous floor mats by virtue of its construction, but still is able to prevent movement of the floor mat when installed in a motor vehicle.
2. Description of The Prior Art
A review of the prior art involving automotive floor mats will show that there are three main areas of concern to the designers of such products. These are the need to cut costs due to ever increasing price pressures on automotive suppliers due to foreign competition; the need to continually cut the weight of automotive floor mats due to the pressures on auto makers to improve fuel economy; and, the need while cutting price and weight to effectively retain the floor mat on the automotive carpet. The efforts of myself and other employed by Applicant's assignee show the tremendous amount of work that has been put forth in this field. These efforts started as early as March of 1980, and resulted in the issuance of U.S. Pat. No. 4,361,610, continued with the filing of application Ser. No. 06/444,986, and culminated with the issuance of U.S. Pat. No. 4,588,628 before I myself became involved with this work. The floor mat disclosed and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,588,628, which is the closest prior art of which I am aware, is a double sided floor mat with detachable, rotateable, retainer means of a particular construction, which is very effective in retaining such a floor mat on an automotive carpet.
However, such floor mats have proven to be rather heavy, and rather expensive to manufacture. It was thought that one of the varieties of floor mats claimed in said U.S. Letters Patents would suffice if further reductions in weight would have to be made. This is the floor mat which is claimed with carpeting on only one side and a retainer with bristles on only one side. However, even though there was a saving in weight, the solution was unsatisfactory, because without bristles on the top side of the retainer acting on the carpeting on the bottom of the retainer, the retainer was free to slip relative to the floor mat for a short distance, which gave an annoying and dangerous slipping feeling when the passenger was first entering the vehicle, and because of this slippage, the tabs on the retainer started to show damage because of the strain put on them from the slipping action.
Because of this problem, such solution was not accepted by the automakers, and much additional work and invention had to take place before a satisfactory solution was arrived at. The inventions which have been made are claimed and disclosed in the present application, and in a previous application in which T am the inventor entitled "Light Weight Floor Mat with Retainer Means".